In praise of listening

Audio Books

Whenever I overhear a complaint of someone’s long time-wasting commute I want to whisper into their ear, “It doesn’t have to be that way. You can read books while you drive! You won’t want to stop.” By “read,” I mean listening. Audio books aren’t new, but they aren’t as common as they should be. What a shame because the selection of books available for auditing continues to expand, their relative price continues to drop, and the devices they can be heard on continue to increase. Over the past twenty years I’ve read, oh I suppose, hundreds of books this way. And I am not alone; audio book fans are legion. Here’s what I know about how to maximize this great medium.

1. Being read to is a pleasure. Hearing a book instead of “watching” it can be a powerful experience.
2. Start with a good story. If you have never listened to an audio before, pick what you know is a good tale to begin with. You can always get to that self-help or executive summary later. Try the Pulitzer-winning novel Lonesome Dove for amemorable treat.
3. If at all possible choose an unabridged version. The unabridged is how the authorwanted you to get his/her story. One of the delights about audio books is that they are far more leisurely (reading aloud takes longer), so you can exploit this pace by getting the full undiluted version. I consider these a second choice abridgedversions a second choice.
4. However if a book is only available in an abridged version, it can still be enjoyable.Very rarely, it can be better. Cyberpunk author William Gibson actually prefers the abridged audio version of his book Neuromancer. Occasionally I’ve deliberately chosen an abbreviated version because I just didn’t want to sitthrough the long edition. Still, a book worth reading is usually worth the original text.
5. Avoid dramatizations. These were in vogue for a while but luckily they’ve mostly disappeared. More than one person acts out the dialog, but the histrionic tone usually turns a book into theater. There is something incredibly satisfying about having one voice (with accents and drama, yes) continue through the work.
6. Narrators matter. I have learned to never listen to an author read his own work, no matter who. (Other avid audio book listeners may disagree.) A professional narrator can make all the difference between a book that sings and one that dies. Good narrators can pronounce technical and foreign names exactly, and oftendo accents properly. Their voices don’t waver or dull. But the wrong narrator can pollute a book. I will return a book if I find the narrator’s voice makes me wince. Conversely, if I notice a great narrator I will now seek out the other booksthey have done. Narrating is a very laborious process and good narrators are in top demand, so they won’t invest their time in a mediocre book. Half the spell of a book is cast by the narration.
7. With that in mind, sometimes a narrated version of a book is actually better than reading it. A great example of that is the Harry Potter series. I have no hesitation in saying that Jim Dale’s narration of Harry Potter is better than reading it. (If you want my best candidate for a book to start out, pick any Harry Potter book and listen to it; Get Dale’s narration who is British but did the American edition). Dale performs something like 120 different voices for the series and each character voice is absolutely perfect. He makes an already remarkable series of books fantastic. Two other books that were better listening were Shantaram and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Again, the narrators got the accents of their characters more exact and colorful than my reading ear could have. Russian novels are often improved by audio because they can get all those Russian names and places perfect.
8. Over the years I’ve found that the best books for auditing are either fiction or history. I still audit a lot of nonfiction, but fiction and history work best for me. Both have deep narrative structure. I choose more and more history now because I realize that I don’t have the patience to read history, as in using my eyes while staring at the page. The captured-audience nature of listening (can’t skip easily) demands that I follow the course all the way through. And I’m usually glad I did. So most of the history I read now, I actually audit. Happily, there are a lot ofgreat historical audio books.
9. Having a parallel printed copy of a book can help alleviate one of an audio book’s primary weaknesses: there’s no way to bookmark a passage. Stewart Brand, another audio book fanatic, will usually keep a hard copy of the text in book form handy so that he can mark sections he wants to refer to later. I don’t do that but Isure wish I could bookmark stuff. The Kindle is becoming integrated with Audible books so you may be able to do this in the future.
10. You have a choice of channels. If you still have a CD player, there are plenty of CD audio books around. There are cassette versions for the free taking too. Most folks listen to audio books on a phone or digital player which can be connected to your car’s audio system with a standard phone jack or wireless connection.
11. Auditing while driving is not dangerous. I don’t know how it works but you can be completely engrossed in a story, while the other you somehow drives at your top skill. It’s not the same as talking on a cell phone. Works best if you know exactly where you are going, like on a commute. Doesn’t work if you have to navigate; you’ll miss a turn for sure.
12. Borrow or buy? Public libraries often have a selection of audio books on CD or cassette or for download. I use our interlibrary loan system to get almost any audio book I want if I am willing to wait for it. You can get free audio booksfrom LibriVox (review below). Or you can purchase them from Audible (see details below).

Where to start? Let’s see; this summer my wife and I (on separate commutes) listened to War & Peace, all of it. Great book, great narration. Took three months, but worth every second. Adventures like The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air are just right. Robert Hughes’ history of Australia, The Fatal Shore, listened well. Occasionally I throw in some lightweight mystery or technothriller. Right now I’m auditing the Odyssey and the Iliad. You get the picture. Traffic jams are just story-time extenders. If I’ve got a good book, and someone to read, I’ll go slow and learn something. — KK

Satisfying audio books

Audible

Audio books are fantastic. Download them to your phone, or borrow them from your local library. I’ve audited several hundred books so far, all while driving. I listen to all kinds, light and heavy, fiction and non-fiction, short and long. More and more this is where I get my serious reading done. If at all possible I listen to the unabridged version. If fact my most memorable audible experiences are listening to long deep audio books. The longer the better.

Audible is the central depot for audio books. They don’t carry every audio book, but they carry the most (100,000), and they have the best interface for selecting, pre-viewing, ordering. Since this is an Amazon company they also offer a service that will sync your Kindle version of a book and your Audible version (you need to purchase both versions), so you can switch from reading (in a home) to listening (in a car) without losing your place! I like Audible because they also allow you to “return” a book for a refund if the narrator — or the book! — doesn’t agree with you.

You can buy individual books, but the best deal is monthly or yearly subs at about $15 or $10 per book. Here are a few suggestions of long books that seem to appeal to most people if you want to get started. For the long books I prefer professional narrators over the author’s voice. — KK

Fiction

• Shantaram (Amazing unbelievable immersive vivid journey into the slums of India.)
• Lonesome Dove (Wished it never ended. Pure story, unforgettable characters.)
• War and Peace (I tried many times to read it, but couldn’t get going. Listening was the answer.)
• Harry Potter series (Better than either the movies or reading the books. Narrator Jim Dale does 135 voices.)
• Assimov’s Foundation series (Classic science fiction saga that still works.)
• Atlas Shrugged (The only way you can get through all of John Gault’s monologue.)
• Life of Pi (A boy and tiger in lifeboat. Unconventional, unorthodox, unexpected delight.)
• Pillars of the Earth (Historical fiction about building cathedrals over generations.)

Nonfiction

• The Discoverers (How knowledge triumphed over ignorance and invented everything.)
• 1491 (This will change your mind about American natives and history of the continent.)
• 1493 (Same author, will change your mind about African slavery’s role in the Americas.)
• Short History of Everything (Much more enlightening and enjoyable than I thought it could be.)
• God, Country and Coca Cola (About drugs, FDA, and the invention of advertising. And Coke.)
• Peter the Great (A biography of Russia through one man.)
• Into Thin Air (A surprising, page-turning, mind-bending adventure up Mt. Everest.)
• The Looming Towers (Essential deep origins of Osama Ben Laden vs. the US.)

Free, user-generated audio books

LibriVox

Last year I took a cross-country road trip with my 10-year-old daughter, and we were greatly entertained by the free public domain audio books available from LibriVox, an online forum which connects readers (as in those who voice the text) to books, then makes the resulting audio files freely available to all. The library is strictly public domain material, but is very extensive. Most of the books we listened to were read by just one person (“going solo”), but readers can volunteer for individual chapters of books in progress. We listened to The Prince and the Pauper, The Mysterious Island, The Wind in the Willows, Five Children and It, and several selected poems and short stories. (Kudos to Timothy Smith for The Mysterious Island — a tour de force!). Online coordinators organize the readings, which are generally excellent. Some readers provide wonderful voices for each character; some simply read the text. The books are available for download from the website, or can be downloaded via iTunes, which we did and then listened to from the iPod in the car (note: using iTunes, the files are stored as separate podcasts with a separate podcast per chapter; when you download the .mp3 file from the LibriVox website, it is listed not in audiobooks nor podcasts, but as a LibriVox ‘song’). This really is a wonderful public service. It’s not as easy to be a good reader as you may think! If you want to contribute, the website includes a FAQ on how to record and prepare the audio file for submission, including links to free recording software and instructions on adding ID3 tags for the iPod. My daughter is enchanted with the concept, and has since volunteered to read chapters of Raggedy Ann Stories. — Paul Goessling

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